Memoirs of a Replacement
by JaQueen
Summary: Botan Murasaki had plans for her life. Carefully laid since the age of three. She would train to be a medic-nin and work in the village, away from the chaos about to erupt in the Elemental Lands. These plans unravel the day of team assignments. And ten years of planning are now useless in the face of an uncertain future. SI/OC/Self-Insert OC.


Prologue

I was about three years old when I realized I wasn't actually three years old. I had always been a clever child, more than any children I had seen Before, but only slightly above average when compared to Konoha's born and bred geniuses. When I was three, almost four, I got it into my head that I would try my hand at using chakra. I had been playing "games" with Komachi for a few weeks at the time and was feeling very proud of my ability to move the "shiny blue", as I'd called it before the proper explanations had been made.

Looking back Komachi and Towa probably should have held off for a few more years. No doubt my budding sensor abilities being irritated by all the high level shinobi and ninjutsu surrounding our apartment was what made them feel it was necessary.

Neither of my guardians were home at the time, out on a mission, which had made me start the day pouting, especially when I was informed that it would be Tanuki, the most reticent of my babysitters, in charge that day.

I was playing with my toy shuriken, "killing" the enemy in represented by my favorite stuffed animals, when I noticed that Towa's scroll had been left out. I knew what the scroll contained, the new jutsu that Towa had been working on since his birthday. I looked into the window at Tanuki's reflection and was pleased to find him working on his paperwork instead of watching me. His chakra had also felt calm, lingering in the air to keep track of me but not focused.

I looked back at the scroll peeking out from where it had been left under the coffee table and made a quick decision, before I threw my shuriken over long making it land under the table beside the scroll. I had very cheerfully gone after it, scrambling under the table to further hide my motives and slipping the scroll under my dress.

I went back to playing a few minutes longer, but could barely contain my excitement and a rush of revenge. I was going to use my newly discovered chakra to learn the jutsu in the scroll before Towa got back. That would serve him for someone else to learn it first when he couldn't.

It wasn't a very good plan, but my three year old mind had clung to it and refused to let go. I'd smuggled the scroll, tucked safely in my undergarments, into my room later when I'd been ordered to put up my toys and hid it amongst them. I had made sure to behave the rest of the day so not to arouse suspicion. That night I had dragged it out and secured under my bed began to read it.

I couldn't read very well at the time, but with my minimal skills I was able to identify a few words and the simple format showing the pictures of the hand signs in order supplied the main information.

I had a vague memory of Komachi explanation of chakra and jutsu and knew that I needed to practice gather and letting go of my chakra and have the hand signs down before I could try. I was determined to succeed and started playing the "chakra games" of gathering and letting go in front of my babysitters, who allowed it so long as I stopped when they told me to.

The hand signs I practiced on my own and out from under their watchful eyes. Bathroom breaks, naps, and alone time became carefully guarded. Making the signs was much more difficult than I had expected in my childish arrogance and I stumbled through them hands awkward and unused to being used in such a way.

I preserved though determined to accomplish it before my seven day headline. Tanuki was watching me again the day I got order perfect during a fake bathroom trip. I had nearly fallen over I was so excited and after getting it correct once more I was ready to try it out. I wasn't completely irresponsible though. I had recognized the word fire in the scroll and so decided my test needed to be attempted in the shower in case I needed to put anything out.

I started gathering my chakra as I made the signs focusing on making them correctly and feeling the strange new leap inside as I moved my chakra like the pictures showed. It was difficult, the chakra didn't want to move, and I kept forgetting to continue my hands when I focused on it. By the time I got through all of them without mistake, my legs were shaking and I could barely keep a hold of the chakra. But I was too full of intent and pride despite my exhaustion and finished, picturing the perfect fireball and giving my chakra the mental equivalent of a shove.

My chakra obeyed leaving my body, but I didn't know how to do the in between step of molding the chakra with the handsigns. I could move it that was all. And I did, I shoved my chakra I had painstakingly gather right out of my body and to my hands.

The result was not a fire, but a terribly bone deep pain that made a scream force itself at as my hands glowed and burned almost instant through the first layer of skin. I was staring, crying and screaming at my bloody hands as the exhaustion hit me knocking me down and silent at the force of it.

I had shoved almost the entirety of the chakra my little three-almost-four year old body contained into my hands unused to coating them in it and without understanding how concentrated chakra could damage bare skin. The result was severe chakra burns through several layers of skin, followed by an intense case of chakra depletion that hit very suddenly as my body went mad at the abrupt absence shutting down and causing me to lose consciousness. I hit my head on the way down.

I managed to accomplish all of this in ten minutes and it was only when Tanuki felt the sudden powerful flare of chakra from the bathroom that he realized I wasn't just playing like usual. What he found, he later told me, was my limp body in the bathtub bleeding from my head and hands, pulse and breath so weak he believed I'd died at first glance.

If he hadn't immediately grabbed me and Shunshin-ed me to the hospital, using his ANBU privilege to get me rushed to the medics I would have been dead within five minutes when my heart stopped. It still stopped, for a few seconds, as the medics through themselves into saving me. But if they hadn't been there already bumping and stripping raw, fresh chakra into me it wouldn't have been able to restart.

I only needed the once though. When I woke three days later to Komachi stationed beside me, her lovely face peering down with worry it was with a new mind. The floodgates had been opened and the blurry dreams I had shaken off and forgotten were no longer dreams. They were blurry, but firmly established memories. The memory at the forefront when I woke up to stare into familiar brown eyes framed by blonde hair under a proudly worn hitai-ate was of my death.

I could still feel sinking, unable to fight, and the terrible burning, smothering water in my lungs.

I did the only thing I could with the terribly, awful memories pressing into my three year old mind and knowing a part of me I had hidden away for safety's sake.

I screamed.

I kept screaming until the iryo-nin placed his glowing green balm on my forehead and knocked me out.

Death was just the first of the nasty surprises life would throw at me.

\- _Murasaki Botan, Jounin of Konohagakure, Portion of a letter addressed to Itoh Seishiro, Written: March 1, Rokudaime 2_


End file.
